wow asks,
How come......
we can go through time but not throughout? Or can we?


I am so fascinated by the concept of time so much so that I have started a new hobby of collecting anything in the literature that has something to do with it.

I just have a few items in the collection as yet. My favorite so far is an excerpt from the introduction to Iveta Geramsimchuk's prize-winning essay "Dictionary of Winds" as quoted in an article written by Alan Riding in the New York Times, December 1999.

"The Dictionary of Winds", an excerpt


"The ancients understood that it is impossible to separate one day from the next, one year from the next. It is impossible to liberate the past from the future, in the same way that it is impossible to liberate the right hand from the left and the left from the right. And herein lies the highest idea of the Lord. To divide time meant to destroy it, as Zeno of Elea demonstrated in the very same chase after answers to the unresolved questions.
However, Zeno of Elea was only one of many. In any human society there are always people inclined to undertake a similar vivisection of time. Thank God that they have never managed to do do successfully.
Some having armed themselves with Homer's lotus-eaters, strive to "liberate" the future from the past. The "Dictionary of Winds" refers to thems as "anemophiles." They firmly believe that time is infinite, and they are not interested in how much of it has already passed; after all, there is no limit to infinity and there is no limit to the changes of the world in it.
Others value time as higher than everything else, or they believe that it is a gift of God and to waste it thoughtlessly is the greatest sin. The "Dictionary of Winds" refers to them as "chronists". "Chronists" are not sure of the future, nor are they sure that time is infinite. However, they are sure of the past, and hence strive even more to liberate the past from the future, which brings changes.
Anemophiles and chronists live together --in the real world and the in the world of the "Dictionary of the Winds," in each of us. They love , suffer, pursue scholarly and other research, conduct incessant arguments among themselves; in some there are no vanquished or victors--they all seek answers to the very same questions posed so very long ago, sensing intuitively that these answers exist. And they find them--sooner or later. Often, what they find does not satisfy them. They doubt and search again."






chronist